Even If I Hit The Ground
by greyslostwho
Summary: Part Five of Birthdays Series. Something unexpected happens to Harry and Nikki.


**Part five in my Birthdays series, following In Perfect Silence, On Your Birthday, That Espresso Soaked Morning, Just Hold On, Maybe Forever and At Least You Know You've Lived. Enjoy!**

There are a thousand things; you think afterwards, that you should have noticed. Especially given the career you've chosen, how many times you've seen this, how many people you've judged or rolled your eyes at for not noticing the obvious. But you suppose it's different when it's the obvious in yourself, and you don't notice, you don't notice any of it. With hindsight, it's obvious… but hindsight's a wonderful thing, things are so clear when you look back on them. Your sudden longing for raspberry jam doughnuts, that cappuccino that you assumed had been made with off milk that turned your stomach, those few mornings you were sick… now you look back on them, everything was definite, everything was so obvious. But you didn't add them together at the time, you didn't make any conclusions. You suppose if you had thought about it hard enough… if you'd looked at it the way you look at cases, adding together all the evidence… but this was your life, this was your everyday… you didn't think to be getting _evidence _from it.

You realise when you miss your second period… and then you're trying to work out how long it was since your last one, and you realise it's not the first one you've missed. You've always been prepared, and you've got a pregnancy test _just in case _in your bathroom cabinet – and the plus sign spells it all out for you. You sit on a toilet seat for moments, staring down at your feet, wondering how the hell this could have happened. Because once the idea is planted in your head, all that evidence is rearing its ugly head at you and suddenly it's so obvious. You can't be anything other than pregnant. How this happened, however, you have no idea. You're on the pill, and you've been on it for years, and it's always worked for you. If you believed in something, if you believed in someone up there, you'd say they'd stopped and thought Harry was the right one, and it was time for you to have a child.

You gather yourself together and walk back into the kitchen in the house you and Harry bought only a few months ago, and as you walk down the hall, you catch a look at yourself in the mirror. Somehow, with so much changing inside of you, you expect to see something different there, but everything's exactly the same, you look exactly the same as you did when you went in. That doesn't seem right… although you know it's ridiculous, you can't see how there isn't something you can see in the mirror in front of you, something that's warning you your life's about to change.

As you take a seat at your breakfast bar, head in your hands, it's the first time you ever wish you best friend was someone other than the man you love, the man whose baby you're carrying – you wish you had someone to phone and ask how the hell you're going to tell him. In the end, you settle for phoning Janet, and although you're sure she doesn't have the answer to all this, she's always been one of those people it's easy to talk to, one of those people who always knows the right thing to say. She doesn't have a lot of advice for you – she keeps, infuriating, saying that it's your decision, how you tell him – but she has something to mention that plants the little seed of an idea in your head. It's Harry's birthday in the next few days.

You don't think about it when you're speaking to Janet, but after you've hung up, those words are lingering in your head_. It's his birthday. Maybe this would be the perfect present. _You think about how you would turn it into a present, how you would give it to him alongside the expensive watch you've already bought him, and nothing's coming to mind until you take a step back into the bathroom to find your tweezers, and you can just see the pregnancy test in the bin, the plus sign staring up at you.

And you have an idea.

On the morning of his birthday, in bed, you give him the parcel containing the watch first, and he opens it slowly, smiling so widely when he gets it and giving you such an enthusiastic kiss you wonder whether you should keep the pregnancy test from him for another day, whether telling him would be ruining his birthday, whether you should just keep it secret a little longer… You stop your thought, right there, and sigh slightly, which, if he wasn't too busy setting the correct time and putting it on his wrist, he would have noticed. You can't keep this to yourself any longer. It's going to destroy you.

"I got you a little something else…" you half-whisper, and pass the little package over to him, forcing a smile, and he frowns at you slightly, and his eyes flicker down to the watch for a second, and you can tell he's guessing how much that cost you, and wondering how much you spent on something else, as well, and he's opening it slowly, as if anticipating what's inside. When he opens the little jewellery box you've put it in, and is attacked by a little white stick, with a very clear blue plus sign staring up at him from the end, silence falls over the pair of you, and neither of you move. He's gazing down at it, as if transfixed, as if unable to look away, and there's a lump in your throat so big you don't think you'll be able to get any words out. For moments, you both just sit there, in a sort-of stalemate, and then you just bite the bullet, and can't even bring yourself to look him in the eye as you speak.

"I'm sorry, Harry… I'm on the pill, it just didn't work… I guess… I'm sorry, I-"

So many things seem to happen at once, then. He looks up, from the pregnancy test, and in the split second you allow yourself to look into them, there are tears in his eyes. Then he takes you by the shoulders and kisses you firmly, decidedly, and pulls you into his arms, until you're encased in them, nearly every inch of your skin against every inch of his. When he pulls away from your lips, he speaks, and his voice catches slightly.

"Don't you ever dare apologise to me for something this… something this wonderful, Nikki." He kisses your forehead lightly, and you're not sure where they've come from, but there are tears rising in your eyes, because he looks so happy, and you hadn't allowed yourself to think that was the reaction he would take, so you hadn't allowed yourself to think what you thought about it all. And now, when you do, you are intoxicated by the beauty of it all, and you realise quite how much you want this baby.

"You're alright about it?" you ask him in a small voice, and he looks into your eyes and frowns at you, for a second.

"What do you think I am, Nikki? I'm not just 'alright' about it, I'm ecstatic! This… this is the best thing that's ever happened to me…"

The next words you say, you don't think you know you've even been thinking them, until you say it. "I think this might be the best thing that's ever happened to me as well…"

And he pulls you tighter into his arms (you didn't even know that was possible) and is kissing you with such fervour you're light-headed and you lean into him, and you forget yourself. Because you're not going to have much forgetting-yourself time in the next few years after the next seven months, so you're sure as hell going to make the most of it.

**I'd be grateful of any feedback :)**


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